The Divination Mistress: at Youngblood Circle, Magical D.C.
"Well, dayumm...", grumbled Finola Cumbow, removing first her right shoe, then her left, looking up and down at the accumulations of dirt on the soles. It was about what she'd anticipated finding: much of the residue had escaped closer to the heels, with good-sized chunks settling in near the middle, and the bulk of the dirt grading to a high concentration nearer the toes. The right shoe indicated what sort of muck would occupy one's outer life; the left one, one's inner life. And the patterns of dirt grinding into the grooves indicated that a good deal of stress was coming up in the future, in both the inner and outer worlds of Finola's life.

She sighed and gave Madame Sandansky a tired gaze across the lounge of their hotel in Youngblood Circle. "Jovana, honey, you had to talk me into this conference with the Eye-raqi contingent, now didn't you?" she groused. She pointed to the upturned soles of her shoes. "Sez here, no sooner did I git into D.C., along comes a bunch of shit about to happen in the very near future, as in, the next couple weeks or so. Like I didn't git enough shit happenin' at the frickin' Bureau--" Finola Cumbow, Divination Mistress extraordinaire, who could read patterns of the world in practically every divination tactic known to Wizardkind at the tender age of 35, was a diplomatic liaison with the Southeastern Bureau of Magic. The British had their Ministry for Magic, and the Americans had regional Bureaus. And hell if Miss Cumbow didn't have communication issues every time she arrived at the nation's capitol. She'd been born in East Tennessee, but raised in West Tennessee, and folks there spoke a slightly different tongue than folks in Youngblood Circle, by and large.

Jovana Sandansky laughed, and handed the waterpipe back to Finola. "My dear, smoke some more peppermint and chamomile; you don't want your blood pressure rising already, at your age", she advised. "Yes, we will be discussing Death-Eaters, traveling ghosts, blood-settling, and the Middle Eastern wars; but we needn't feel obligated to solve all the world's problems at once. Perhaps, after dinner with Madame Al-Halim and her party, you might do a reading for us on which dragon, figuratively speaking, we should do battle with first?"

Finola leaned her chair back further with a giggle of fatigue, her long chestnut-brown hair beginning to drape over the arms. Her violet eyes tried to do their usual dance among friends, but Finola was beginning to have trouble keeping them open. "Peppermint and chamomile?" she echoed her Macedonian friend. "Goddamn, Jovana, dontcha have an ounce of hash with a pinch o' ginseng for effect? If you're gonna go to the trouble to vape stuff, at least sneak somethin' yummy into the country in yer backpack." She sat upright again, and tried to get a little bit serious. "Where's your girls from Europe, Jovana? And all them others from the Night Ship? Muggle Secret Service shoot 'em down or something?"

Jovana looked around the lounge; so far, no sign of Marja, Lule, or any owls from the Night Ship crew. "Come to think of it, I'm not sure, Finola. They said something about going out for a walk; I'm not sure why they took their instrument cases with them when they left. Now that you mention the Night Ship, though, I think our first item of business--when Madame Ghazala arrives--might be siphoning off energy from our power-glutted Muggle government buildings. Have you been anywhere near the White House since you got here, my dear? You can feel the power activity radiating off of that structure like a nuclear reactor on the verge of a meltdown!"

As it turned out, Marja, Lule and the two Irish Aurors were not difficult to find. They had set up a busking pitch under the marquee of a beauty salon that was closed for the evening; and were collecting a fair share from an international clientele of witches and wizards who were nonetheless a trifle puzzled at the languages of the songspells they were hearing.

As Jovana and Finola drew closer, a mixture of a grin and a worried grimace showed up on the face of the Macedonian spellsinger. "Oh, dear", she whispered to the Divination Mistress. "That--if I'm not mistaken--is the judgment warning songspell we wrote last year on behalf of our friend the shamanic researcher. You remember what I told you about the Muggle shamanic writer, and how she was ousted from a roleplayer's community?"

"Oh..." Finola struggled with her powers of recall. "You're talkin' about the girl from Maryland, and the whole controversy with the Confundus Board?"

"That's the one", Jovana grinned dryly. "I just hope not too many people here understand Finnish Saami. That set of verses might be a little dark for some people's tastes..."

It was, indeed, the Judgment Warning Songspell, based on the root song, "Any Spellsinger Worth Her Salt." And the song was clearly picking up in intensity, especially when Nuala started in playing backup rhythm on her bodhran.